Scowcroft Center Commentary, Analysis, & Reports

Explore the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s latest insights, commentary, articles, media hits, and in-depth reports

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New Atlanticist

May 31, 2011

Pakistan Has a Mountain to Climb

By Shuja Nawaz

In an interview with Ullekh NP of The Economic Times, Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center Director Shuja Nawaz warns that attacks on soft targets are going to rise rapidly in the subcontinent.

New Atlanticist

May 31, 2011

Select Foreign Response to the U.S. International Cyber Strategy

By Jason Healey

The Obama Administration’s International Cyber Strategy, launched last week, was met by the Russian and Chinese press with a mix of generally negative reactions. The most negative were rooted in skepticism and mistrust about U.S. motives as well as perceived hypocrisy underlying the proposed cyber standards.

Cybersecurity Security & Defense

New Atlanticist

May 31, 2011

Time for Peace Talks

By Maleeha Lodhi

In more ways than one, Osama bin Laden’s death has changed the dynamic in the region and offered a new opportunity to pursue a political settlement to end the almost decade long war in Afghanistan. Bin Laden’s killing by a covert American mission has injected unprecedented strains in the long troubled Pakistan-US relationship. But in […]

New Atlanticist

May 27, 2011

Warsaw, Wroclaw and Transatlantic Priorities

By Ian Brzezinski

This week Poland will host President Obama and twenty European heads of state. The Warsaw summit presents an important opportunity to reinforce consensus and joint action in the realms of security, economic cooperation, and the promotion of democracy in and beyond Europe. The meeting will set the tone for Poland’s approaching EU Presidency and is […]

Europe & Eurasia

New Atlanticist

May 26, 2011

Obama’s Crucial Moment in Poland

By Kurt Volker Vejvoda Damon Wilson

President Obama’s visit to Europe this week is giving him the opportunity to bury once and for all perceptions that have dogged his administration from the outset: that the US has lost interest in Europe, and has put a higher priority on resetting relations with an authoritarian Russia than it has on the completion of […]

New Atlanticist

May 26, 2011

USA and the ICC: An Unfinished Debate

By Robert Bracknell

 I recently returned from a week in Iraq, where I trained an elite security force unit on human rights and the law of combat operations. Discussions regarding the responsibility of commanders for the acts of their forces migrated to the issue of the United Nations’ International Criminal Court. One Iraqi officer asked me, "If the […]

New Atlanticist

May 26, 2011

The Incredible Shrinking Ahmadinejad

By Barbara Slavin

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now discovering what his predecessors in Islamic Iran’s unique dual system of government all learned to their sorrow: You serve at the pleasure of the supreme leader, and he prefers his presidents weak. In the aftermath of a failed attempt by Ahmadinejad to fire Iran’s intelligence minister last month, Supreme Leader Ali […]

New Atlanticist

May 25, 2011

Time for a NATO-China Council?

By Jorge Benitez

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently expressed a desire for NATO and China to develop a deeper relationship, comparable to the NATO-Russia Council.   He observed that NATO has formal relationships with four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The US, UK, and France are founding members of the Alliance and […]

China NATO

New Atlanticist

May 22, 2011

US-Pakistan Relations: No More Business As Usual

By Shuja Nawaz

The US-Pakistan alliance is fraying. But there may yet be some hope.

NATOSource

May 21, 2011

NATO and the EU: Centrifugal Forces and Fragmentation?

By Ioan Mircea Pascu, the New Atlanticist

From Ioan Mircea Pascu, the New Atlanticist:  While we, the former allies of the Soviet Union were watching attentively that behaviour, drawing the right conclusions in regard to our future security

European Union International Organizations

New Atlanticist

May 20, 2011

Taking the Long View on the Middle East Revolts

By Barry Pavel

The President’s speech on the Middle East yesterday finally outlined the Administration’s initial principles for addressing one of the most significant developments in international relations in a generation.  Until yesterday, the debate about options in Libya and how to approach the Middle East revolts in general was far too narrow in scope and too near-term […]

New Atlanticist

May 20, 2011

NATO and the EU: Centrifugal Forces and Fragmentation?

By Ioan Mircea Pascu

Even before the adoption of the New Strategic Concept and the Lisbon Summit, one of the major concerns of the new allies, namely us from East-Central Europe, was the necessity that NATO retains the capacity to honour its fundamental obligation to guarantee the security of its members. That was so because, on the one hand, […]

European Union International Organizations

New Atlanticist

May 17, 2011

Locating the Sources of Extremism in Pakistan

By Luv Puri

In 2006, a friend of mine took me to Abbottabad, which falls on the Karakorran highway, and introduced it as a city of oranges while driving from Islamabad to earthquake impacted areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Muzaffarabad district of Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Abbottabad, which was the final abode of  the world’s most wanted man, […]

New Atlanticist

May 16, 2011

Raging at Rawalpindi

By Shuja Nawaz

The United States has long complained that Pakistan’s military and intelligence services are playing a double game when it comes to terrorism and extremism: publicly promising cooperation-and indeed delivering some-while privately supporting America’s enemies. They point to Pakistan’s apparent reluctance to take on groups like the Haqqaani network, a Taliban affiliate that launches attacks on […]

New Atlanticist

May 13, 2011

The Perfect Storm in Af-Pak

By Shuja Nawaz

With the killing of Osama bin Laden, attention has shifted to the endgame in Afghanistan. But a persistent problem remains inside Pakistan: the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban. This homegrown terrorist organization swore war against the state when the army was sent into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering Afghanistan. For the past […]

NATOSource

May 12, 2011

The Lawfulness of Killing Bin Laden

By Robert Bracknell, the New Atlanticist

From Robert Bracknell, the New Atlanticist:  Killing bin Ladin was not an extrajudicial execution, a murder, or a war crime.  It was a combat engagement lawful under U.S. and international legal authority – full stop.

United States and Canada

New Atlanticist

May 12, 2011

The Lawfulness of Killing Bin Laden

By Robert Bracknell

Much has been made of the recent revelations that Osama bin Laden was unarmed at the moment he was killed by U.S. special operations forces in close quarters battle.  Let us put this issue to rest with dispatch, once and for all:  Killing bin Ladin was not an extrajudicial execution, a murder, or a war […]

New Atlanticist

May 9, 2011

Nuking NATO

By Julian Lindley-French

Tallinn, Estonia. Sitting here on the banks of the serene Baltic in a beautiful city founded by eighth century Danish knights it is difficult to imagine the tsunamis of violent history that have washed over this place. And yet, for the past two days I have been discussing a seismic shift in NATO’s nuclear reality […]

Event Recap

May 3, 2011

Atlantic Council Launches Brent Scowcroft Center and Rafik Hariri Center

By Jason Harmala

The Atlantic Council announced two ambitious new initiatives: the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security and the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

New Atlanticist

May 3, 2011

The Pakistan Dilemma

By Shuja Nawaz

 U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement yesterday about Osama bin Laden’s death in Abbottabad, Pakistan raises questions about the health of the U.S.-Pakistani relationship. Pakistan seems to have helped the United States track down bin Laden’s lair, as Obama acknowledged. But it is unclear whether Pakistan was involved in planning the mission that brought U.S. Special […]

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